1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to multiplexing, and serializing/deserializing data from a number of devices across a serial interface, and more particularly to serializers/deserializers found in hand held devices.
2. Background Information
Typically hand held devices include serializers/deserializers that support only a two devices, e.g. an LCD display and a camera.
It would be advantageous if the serializer/deserializer supported I/O (input/output) devices that include an LCD display, a camera, and keypad matrix and an audio processor. These I/O devices, like many microprocessors, typically have parallel interfaces. In mobile devices, however, some I/O devices are separated by a flexible cable hinge from a controller microprocessor.
It would be advantageous if a serializer/deserializer provided the interface between a microprocessor and the above I/O devices. A serializer/deserializer reduces the number of wires that must traverse the flexible cable hinge found in many hand held devices, and reducing the number of signal wires or lines across the hinge improves, at least, reliability, cost and noise.
For example for a typical hand held cell phone, there may be as many as 44 signal wires that traverse the flexible cable hinge between the moving (sliding, folding) part and the microprocessor part of a hand held device. For example, the LCDs (main and sub) may have 22 lines, a camera may have 12 lines; the keypad 7 lines and audio processor 3 lines, or 44 lines total.
It would be advantageous to reduce the number of physical wires that traverse the hinge of a folding or sliding mobile phone. Serialization provides one level of wire reduction.
It will be appreciated by those skilled in the art that although the following Detailed Description will proceed with reference being made to illustrative embodiments, the drawings, and methods of use, the present invention is not intended to be limited to these embodiments and methods of use. Rather, the present invention is of broad scope and is intended to be defined as only set forth in the accompanying claims.